US troops shot Afghan women and covered it up

Richard Oppel

KABUL: After denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the US-led military command in Kabul has admitted its forces had in fact killed the women during the raid.

The admission raised questions about what happened during the operation on February 12 - and what lies followed - including a report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies to hide the nature of their deaths.

A NATO official said on Sunday that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence-tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed.

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has railed against killings of civilians by Western forces.

NATO officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians - a district prosecutor and local police chief - during the raid on a home near Gardez, in south-eastern Afghanistan. They were shot dead when they came out of their home, armed with Kalashnikovs, to investigate when the soldiers arrived.

Three women also died that night at the same home. One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the ''bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed'' and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.

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Survivors of the raid called that explanation a cover-up and insisted that American forces killed the women. Relatives and family friends said the raid followed a party in honour of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house.

But in a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times reported that Afghan investigators determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also ''dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath'' and then ''washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened''.

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

''We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families,'' Brigadier-General Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said.

''The force went to the compound based on reliable information in search of a Taliban insurgent and believed the two men posed a threat to their personal safety. We now understand that the men killed were only trying to protect their families.''